Larry McMurtry became the defining literary voice of the American West despite having zero interest in ranching and a deep aversion to working with animals. Growing up on his grandparents' ranch outside Archer City, Texas, in a house with no books, he absorbed storytelling through oral tradition until a cousin left behind a box of adventure novels that ignited a lifelong obsession with reading.

After struggling with math at Rice, he found his footing in creative writing and a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, where geographic distance let him dismantle the romanticized myths of the frontier. This deep dive traces his journey from rural decay novels to Lonesome Dove, Terms of Endearment, Brokeback Mountain, and a parallel life as an antiquarian bookseller.

• How Horseman, Pass By became the film Hud and revealed the gap between his in ...